For all the spectacular upturn in Haydn’s fortunes over the last few decades, his pre-London symphonies are still high-risk territory for the record companies. The three period-instrument cycles – from Goodman (Hyperion), Hogwood (L’Oiseau-Lyre) and Weill (Sony) – have all been abandoned due to poor sales, leaving only two cycles on modern instruments still up and running: the very variable Naxos series, and the slowly evolving cycle from Adam Fischer and the orchestra he founded in 1987 in Eisenstadt, where Haydn lived and worked for much of his life. Now past the half-way mark, Fischer and his orchestra here give us a swathe of symphonies from the crucial, climacteric years of the late 1760s and early 1770s, when his style attained a new sophistication and assurance allied to an emotional range and depth barely glimpsed in his earlier symphonies.
The most famous works on these discs are the minor-key Symphonies Nos. 44, 45, 49 and 52, each of them pushing the contemporary musical language close to breaking point, and the glittering, regal No. 48, erroneously but understandably nicknamed the Maria Theresia. But many of the lesser-known symphonies are no less inspired: No. 43, the so-called Mercury, for instance, with its mingled fire and lyricism, and its exquisitely tender Adagio; No. 46, in the outlandish key of B major and astonishingly tense and turbulent for a work of this period in the major; or No. 54, a grandly scaled, richly scored work with a slow movement (marked, uniquely in Haydn, Adagio assai) of mesmeric intensity. (Incidentally, this is the first recording of this symphony since Dorati’s over a quarter of a century ago.) The traditional numbering of Haydn’s symphonies is, of course, notoriously imprecise; and two of the works here are wildly misplaced: No. 40, one of several early symphonies with a fugal finale, dates from 1763, while the urbane (and obscurely nicknamed) No. 53, a great popular hit in Haydn’s day, was composed around 1778-9, several years later than any other work on these discs.
With close microphone placing, Nimbus now have the atmospheric but ultra-resonant acoustic of the Haydnsaal in Eisenstadt’s Esterhazy Palace under better control than when this series was launched with the London Symphonies back in 1989 (12/89). The bass can be a shade boomy (especially in No. 45, which was recorded several years earlier than the rest), but in general the sound combines an attractive glow with ample clarity in the tuttis, even if horns tend to be balanced too discreetly for my taste.
As for the performances, what immediately strikes you, as on previous issues, is the string tone, with that echt-Viennese sweetness (but never oversweetness) and plangency; the faintly nasal timbre of the oboes is also distinctively Viennese, as are the wonderfully mellow horns, which rise superbly to their virtuoso challenges in No. 51. Slow movements are almost invariably persuasive. The rapt Adagios of Nos. 43-5 and No. 54, for instance, have a chamber-musical intimacy and finesse, with Fischer showing a real feeling for their melodic delicacy and grace and their harmonic breadth. In previous issues in this series Fischer has often favoured relatively relaxed speeds for outer movements. But here Allegros are often appreciably faster and airier – closer, in fact, to recent period-instrument recordings – than Dorati’s in his pioneering complete cycle for Decca. Comparisons are decidedly to Fischer’s advantage in, say, the rollicking Presto finale of No. 41 (where Dorati sounds distinctly cautious), or the finale of No. 47, where Fischer catches the music’s wild, gipsy accents that much more vividly than his fellow-Hungarian.
Fischer also scores in his readings of the minor-key symphonies, especially that of No. 52, where his leaner sonorities (minimal string vibrato here), keener tempos (above all in the first movement) and nervier, more explosive manner capture more fully the music’s disquiet and desperation. But the sharpest contrast of all between Fischer and Dorati is in the minuets, which Dorati invariably views as slow Landler. Even in the 1970s, before the ‘authentic’ revolution, several of them, notably those of Nos. 43, 46 and 50, sounded dangerously leisurely, whereas Fischer’s minuets, at spruce yet elegant tempos, seem ideally judged, with the players giving an instinctive lift to rhythms that are in their blood. I was, though, increasingly irritated by Fischer’s almost invariable habit of using solo strings in the trios (and once or twice elsewhere, as in the finale of No. 48) – a charming, ear-tickling effect once in a while, perhaps, but here a predictable gimmick that can come close to trivializing the music.
A couple of textual points: Fischer uses high, B alto horns in No. 46, enhancing the music’s highly strung brilliance, whereas Dorati has them down an octave; and in No. 48 Dorati uses C alto horns, glowing white-hot through the texture, where Fischer has trumpets. Apart from my reservations over Fischer’s solo string fetish, and the odd moment of shaky ensemble or tuning, I greatly enjoyed these five well-filled discs. Dorati’s deeply considered readings, available only in the 33-disc budget-price set of the whole cycle, are often admirable. But for performances of this particular group of works on modern instruments I’d tend to go for Fischer, no less shapely and expressive in his phrasing but generally swifter, more volatile and lighter on his feet.'